


Dungeons and Demons

by danu (orphan_account)



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: All will be explained, Alternate Universe- the original plot of OTGW is a lot darker, Kinda, Magical Elements, Original Character(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wirt is a sad, but its still not common or 'real', etc - Freeform, he has nightmares, he hasnt talked to his family for a long time, i think all my bases are covered, magic isnt confined to Gravity Falls, many of the characters are only cameos/flashbacks, maybe illustrations?????? who knows, more like 'destiny', not really - Freeform, ooooo a prophecyyy, sad college boys, some of our characters will discover their own powers, there will be a rick sanchez mention somewhere, theyre all side characters tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 05:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8044942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/danu
Summary: Wirt McHale is a twenty-year-old college student who's always looking for distractions. He knows he can't avoid the trauma forever. One of these days, he'll have to stop running.Dipper Pines is a college freshman with a full ride to University of Boston for engineering, theoretical physics, and life science. He's trying to move on, away from the paranormal, but the paranormal just seems to follow.





	Dungeons and Demons

He doesn't pay the cover. He's been coming to this club for at least a year now, and he knows the bouncer personally. Intimately, even. Half the regulars, men and women, are familiar with him in such ways. 

He has regrets. Sex helps him forget that by some standards, he’s filthy. At least his partners don’t feel that way. _Maybe they do, and you just don’t know. Maybe they talk about it behind your back. They’re disgusted by you-_ he shakes his head. Shakes the bad thoughts away. Losing himself in the deafening music, the flashing lights- the sensory overload makes everything seem far away. He’s untouchable in this dissociated state, distant from reality. 

He wasn’t here to lose himself in the lustful glamour of sex- not tonight. Maybe a few drinks, but he has to work tomorrow. The semester started last week and he knows he’ll start getting actual homework soon. He’d try to hold off on the existential dread until midterms at the soonest. It may lend some depth to his writing.

His name is Walter, though he prefers to be called Wirt. It’s less stiff and old-fashioned. He weaves through the dance floor and seats himself on a barstool. The bartender, Adrian- _a massively built man, it was astounding how quickly he had melted under your fingertips_ \- nods at him, offering a friendly smile by way of welcome. Wirt smiles back, not bothering to shout over the noise. Adrian knows what he’ll want. What drink, that is. He suspected the bartender was otherwise at a loss when it came to Wirt’s desires or intentions. Honestly, he prefers it that way. It minimized unwanted solicitations.

Wirt looks around the bar as he waits for his Manhattan (he was a drinker of the cocktail sort). The counter seats ten, though currently only six seats were occupied. Two were semi-regulars, one was himself, and the other three were strangers to him. A pair of women, one white and one latina, chatting as they sipped their own drinks. The white woman held her martini like she had no doubt seen women do on television, probably thinking it made her seem much classier than her ripped denim shorts and salmon tank-top would imply. The latina woman was unimpressed but slightly drunk, her inhibitions lowered enough to allow her to engage in conversation with the other woman. A man- well, a college student- sat on the end, drinking shots of whiskey. He didn’t look twenty-one (men don’t wear baseball caps unless they’re forty year old Republicans), but even if he were only eighteen, it wouldn’t surprise Wirt that he’d been served alcohol, himself being barely twenty. However, that wasn’t the only reason he seemed out of place.

A muffled _thunk_ announced the arrival of his drink, and he turns his attention back to his glass. He smiles and thanks the bartender before taking a sip. Adrian is a master of proportions, if nothing else. He wishes it were a bit more sour, but he really can’t complain. Drink in hand, he swivels around to scan the dancers. 

There she is. His good friend since high school, Sara had been hired on as a dancer here. She was bisexual, which is how she came to work at Queer Pressure- a club for gays, lesbians, and what-have-you. Wirt filed himself under the ‘what-have-you’ category. He wasn’t one for labels, seeing as a label could change after any experience. If anyone asked, he just told them he was pansexual.

Wirt could always get more alcohol for less money in the comfort of his own shitty apartment, but he liked to walk Sara home, both for her safety and her company. Wirt had never been the type to amass great quantities of ‘friends’. He preferred to keep a few genuine friends that he could count on and relate to. Sara was much the same way, though infinitely more extraverted. She had many acquaintances, but few true friends- and she liked it that way. They were a match made in platonic heaven, though it took them a little while to realize that. No matter- their failed attempts at romance had only strengthened their friendship.

Sara’s shift ended in about ten minutes. Wirt took extra slow sips and continued to observe. There was something poetic about this place, of that he was sure. He hadn’t written more than a few messy pages of nonsense in his little notepad since he’d received it almost a year ago. He barely wrote real poetry, even for academic purposes anymore. Each night he would try to piece words together the way he had done so easily before. Just a line or two, every day. Sometimes he would observe details that he could have once taken such inspiration from, but the magic was just… gone. 

His gaze had drifted back to the lone man at the end of the counter. He looked almost as disheartened as Wirt himself felt most times. He wore a white t-shirt under some kind of vest. Khaki cargo shorts, it looked like, and his shoes were out of sight. His hair was a curly dark brown mess, topped with a worn white-and-blue baseball cap. His facial hair was unkempt, in an almost attractive way, but not quite. He had the genetic potential to be ‘hot’ or ‘cute’, or whatever the preferred descriptor was these days, but he seemed not to care one way or another what he looked like. Wirt can relate. 

Thunk. Wirt blinks in mild surprise. Another cocktail before him, Adrian rests his elbows on the countertop, leaning forward in an almost conspirational manner. A half-smile plays on his lips. He was never known to be subtle. 

Wirt sighs inwardly. He knows what’s coming, and he wishes he could stop it before it even started. Alas, that’s just not how it works with Adrian.

“You look like you could use a little pick-me-up. You know, my shift ends in a few minutes, if you wanna… Hang out a little?” He looks genuinely hopeful. Wirt wonders how he could be so dense, but he smiles back anyway.

“S-sorry, I’m not looking for any fun tonight- I have to work tomorrow, and then I have classes.” He resists the urge to cringe. He doesn’t stutter like that anymore, not unless he’s nervous, and what does he have to be afraid of? Adrian is a mere trifle compared to the literal demons Wirt has faced. 

Regardless, Adrian doesn’t notice the crack in Wirt’s carefully composed façade. It is a mask he has worn for years- five years, as of this Halloween. 

“Aw, c’mon babe, when’s the last time you got some?”

Wirt snorts at that. _Got some. Did it. Fucked. Banged. Did the horizontal tango._ So many ways to say the same thing, without implying emotional attachment. God was dead, and he had taken romance with him, into the abyss. Into the Unknown.

He stands abruptly, an offhand excuse on his lips. 

Setting a wrinkled ten dollar bill on the counter, he turns and walks away. It was time to get Sara and leave.

Which was admittedly easier said than done. Sara was a beautiful woman- men and women alike found her ebony skin ‘exotic’ or ‘alluring’, but Wirt disagreed. The color of her skin was not what made her gorgeous. As she had grown, her beauty became apparent in the confident way she carried herself. In the way she clipped her consonants because enunciating words slowed her down, how she stopped straightening her hair (“It’s such a hassle!”) and instead cut it short, how she calls her makeup ‘warpaint’, and doesn’t give a shit about societal norms, and wears what she wants _and_ makes it look good; the woman is a hurricane and _will fuck you up, buddy._

She leaves the party when she’s good and ready. Except tonight, because her best friend and polar opposite is ready to go, like, _now._ He gets more than a few dirty looks while dragging her off (read: convincing her to drag _him_ off). Of course, it takes less than thirty seconds for the thrill of the club life to wear off, and she’s grateful they left.

“Honestly, my feet feel like blocks of wood. And pain. Lots of pain,” she says, grimacing.

Wirt makes a sympathetic noise, throwing an arm around her shoulder. He listens to her talk, as he always does, while they walk, as they always do, to her apartment building in downtown Boston. It’s Sunday night, so she talks about her classes and the projects she still hasn’t done, the chapters she still hasn’t read. She tells him how she dreads their English Literature class because the TA is always trying to ‘hit her up’ after lectures. She briefly gushes about a girl in her Studio Art class. Wirt listens and smiles and nods when appropriate. He occasionally weighs in with a short anecdote from his own day. 

Overall, Wirt doesn’t talk much. That’s the way it’s been ever since The Incident. He’s content to listen and she’s content to talk, right up to the door of her apartment’s building. That’s where they part ways, almost every day. An embrace, a smile, a quiet ‘good night!’, and the interaction is over.

It’s not as though Wirt is distant- he and Sara have a closer bond than most, and he’s quite personable, even chatty sometimes. It’s just the night, after a long day and right at the beginning of a long week. He’s conserving his energy. That’s what he tells himself.

Truthfully, Wirt has not slept since he woke up on Friday morning. Insomnia is beyond his understanding and he’s inclined to just accept it and despair, like he does about… Virtually everything, actually. A little birdie had once described him as a pushover. Perhaps she was right.

One thing he would not do, however, was take the shortcut through the city park. He was perfectly fine going around; it was no inconvenience to him. That’s what he tells himself.

The two-block park consisted of a small playground and swing set, a stone fountain, a historical statue, a few dirt paths and a little ‘grove’. Except, the so-called ‘grove’ (which was, by definition, ‘a small group of trees’) was not small at all. Rather, it took up at least half the entire park and always looked dark and forbidding. Sara called it ‘projection’. Wirt called it ‘preference’. Sara said ‘trauma’. Wirt argued ‘stress’.

So almost every day, he walked around it. He kept the treeline in his sight. Just in case.

If anyone asked him what he was afraid of, he doesn’t know what he’d tell them, because he himself wasn’t entirely sure. He hates walking away from it, if only because he can’t keep an eye on it. 

_Ha, yeah, I have a phobia. Of… Trees._

_Hey, you never know what’s lurking in the well-lit public park._

_I had a traumatic near-death experience as a young teen in which I met the God of Death and he was a tree amassing a tree army to feed upon._

Or maybe he could just, like, never talk about it ever. Yes, that sounds like a solid plan. 

He breathes in the crisp night air as he walks the last few blocks to his own respective building. He stares into the sky for a moment, admiring the few stars that are visible under the glare of the streetlights. He can see one of the Dippers and Orion’s Belt. He wonders if that would mean something to someone who actually cared about that shit. Probably not.

He keys himself into the building. It’s surprisingly empty- for the last two weeks it’d been a mess of college kids moving in for the year. Looks like the last of them had finally settled in. He was like that too, once. But Wirt had always been a fast learner. It was a survival skill at this point.

He trudges up the stairs. The single elevator is slow and broke down with no apparent warning. He doesn’t want to sleep in the Death Box tonight. 

Worn, dark grey carpets. The hall smells like cigarettes. The wooden doors are flimsy- they may as well be curtains for all the protection they offer. Not like anyone living here would have anything worth taking. It was a building of a few hundred cells for poor people to hide in. He stops at the fourth door on the left. Three plastic numbers with chipped gold paint read ‘208’. This is the door Wirt hides behind. 

The apartment is small. Simple living, they call it. A little kitchen connected to the living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. Plus a closet in the bedroom. That’s it. It’s all he needs, really. 

The kitchen is the first room, if it can even be classified as its own room. Just the oven, sink, and refrigerator lined up against the wall. The living room was the other three walls. An old couch, a table, a single comfy chair, and the television made up all the furniture. Wirt walks straight to his bedroom, kicking off his shoes as he sits on the mattress. He takes a pen and his little pocket journal from the rickety bedside table. He doesn’t think too hard, he just jots down some words.

 _The sun came out today; the sun shall come out tomorrow._

He couldn’t think of a rhyme that wasn’t overused. Stupid. The sentence itself doesn’t even mean anything. The pocket journal lands on the worn carpet. The pen skitters underneath the bed.

He stands, unbuckles his belt, and discards his jeans. He throws himself face-first onto his bed in his t-shirt and boxer briefs, wriggling into his blankets. He lies there, trying not to think, not allowing himself to look up at every noise like a meerkat. He refuses to feed his paranoia. He knows that eventually, one of these days, he’ll drift off. 

And drift off he does.


End file.
